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Tuesday, February 21, 2017

That’s the response that would probably come first if someone asked me what motivated me to make this new video project. But if I thought about it a little, I might come up with something along the lines of this: “Not that I need a reason, you sniveling jerk, but I feel like a nearly lifelong love of horror movies and weird ’80s music is reason enough.”

That gets pretty much to the point of my second video project, which I’m calling “All the Colors of the Night” and which you can watch in full below.

Heads up: This project contains boobs and butts and some blood, and it’s therefore NSFW, unless your work is cool about typical horror movie fare. If you’re squeamish about violence, know that there’s nothing excessively graphic, but these are horror movies I’m working with, for the most part, so there’s a certain base level of bodily violence that should be expected.

My previous video project came out of nowhere, really, because I’d been pretty much only words up until that point, and while I’m happy I did it, I now feel like it’s mostly a messy and unstructured thing. I felt like I wanted to give it another shot and make something a bit more orderly. You can judge for yourself whether I achieved this. Regardless, I liked wrapping up a bunch of horror movies (and thereabouts) in colorful dressing and setting them to ’80s Euro pop (and thereabouts), and I hope you do too.

A few notes:

I tried to make it so it looks good either on a computer monitor or a TV screen.

Please watch the credits.

Please watch for patterns.

I do acknowledge that the vast majority of characters appearing in this project are white people. I will blame that on the genre as it existed back in the day. I did my best to offer Geretta Geretta prominent placement.

I also acknowledge that a disproportionate number of victims of violence in this are female. I will again blame this on the genre as it existed back in the day.

I honestly love all of the movies and songs I included in this project, and in case anyone wants to point out that I am essentially using them all without permission, I’d like to clarify that I don’t intend to make a dime off this project and I consider it a remix—just one that blends video and music in a way that doesn’t exist online elsewhere and that does not intend to take the place of the original film or songs.

I started this project the day before Halloween and finished it on Valentine’s Day, meaning that the world seems a lot different now than it did beforehand. I will hold back on making any grand metaphors, but I did this because I wanted to try take movies that people might think of as scary or weird or dark and focus on the parts that make them beautiful. You can find nice moments even when things are scary, I guess.

The title comes from a 1972 Edwige Fenech film All the Colors of the Dark, which was released in the U.S. as They’re Coming To Get You and Day of the Maniac. I like my version of the title better.

Part four (“Italian Purple”): Blood and Black Lace + “Jamie” by Mistral — and for the love of God please watch the original video for “Jamie,” as it will make your life immeasurably better and worse for having seen it